Characterizing cell interactions at scale with made-to-order droplet ensembles (MODEs)

Cell–cell interactions are important to numerous biological systems, including tissue microenvironments, the immune system, and cancer. However, current methods for studying cell combinations and interactions are limited in scalability, allowing just hundreds to thousands of multicell assays per experiment; this limited throughput makes it difficult to characterize interactions at biologically relevant scales. Here, we describe a paradigm in cell interaction profiling that allows accurate grouping of cells and characterization of their interactions for tens to hundreds of thousands of combinations. Our approach leverages high-throughput droplet microfluidics to construct multicellular combinations in a deterministic process that allows inclusion of programmed reagent mixtures and beads. The combination droplets are compatible with common manipulation and measurement techniques, including imaging, barcode-based genomics, and sorting. We demonstrate the approach by using it to enrich for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells that activate upon incubation with target cells, a bottleneck in the therapeutic T cell engineering pipeline. The speed and control of our approach should enable valuable cell interaction studies.